Ferrari F40
The Ferrari F40 is a mid-engined, rear-wheel drive sports car4 built from 1987 to 1992, with the LM and GTE race car versions continuing production until 1994 and 1996 respectively.2 As the successor to the Ferrari 288 GTO, it was designed to celebrate Ferrari's 40th anniversary and was the last Ferrari automobile personally approved by Enzo Ferrari. At the time it was Ferrari's fastest, most powerful, and most expensive car for sale. The car debuted with a planned production total of 400 and a factory suggested retail price of approximately US$400,000 in 1987 ($860,000 today), although some buyers were reported to have paid as much as US$3.6 million in contrast to its 1999 value of £140,000.7 One of those that belonged to the Formula One driver Nigel Mansell was sold for the then record of £1 million in 1990, a record that stood into the 2010s. A total of 1,311 F40s were manufactured with 213 units destined for the United States. As early as 1984, the Maranello factory had begun development of an evolution model of the 288 GTO intended to compete against the Porsche 959 in FIA Group B. However, when the FIA brought an end to the Group B category for the 1986 season, Enzo Ferrari was left with five 288 GTO Evoluzione development cars, and no series to enter them into competition. Enzo's desire to leave a legacy in his final supercar allowed the Evoluzione program to be further developed to produce a car exclusively for road use.14 In response to the quite simple, but very expensive car with relatively little out of the ordinary being called a "cynical money-making exercise" aimed at speculators, a figure from the Ferrari marketing department was quoted as saying "We wanted it to be very fast, sporting in the extreme and Spartan," "Customers had been saying our cars were becoming too plush and comfortable." "The F40 is for the most enthusiastic of our owners who want nothing but sheer performance. It isn't a laboratory for the future, as the 959 is. It is not Star Wars. And it wasn't created because Porsche built the 959. It would have happened anyway."15 The F40 body was designed by Leonardo Fioravanti and Pietro Camardella of studio Pininfarina, under the guidance of Nicola Materazzi, the engineer who designed engine, gearbox and other mechanical parts of the car and had previously designed the bodywork of the 288 GTO Evoluzione, from which the F40 takes many styling cues from. Power came from an enlarged, 2,936 cc (2.9 L) version of the 288 GTO's IHI twin turbocharged V8 engine producing a peak power output of 471 hp (478 PS; 351 kW) as stated by the manufacturer. Gearing, torque curves and actual power output differed among the cars. The F40 did without a catalytic converter until 1990 when US regulations made them a requirement for emissions control reasons. The flanking exhaust pipes guide exhaust gases from each bank of cylinders while the central pipe guides gases released from the wastegate of the turbochargers. The suspension setup was similar to the GTO's double wishbone setup, though many parts were upgraded and settings were changed; the unusually low ground clearance prompted Ferrari to include the ability to raise the vehicle's ground clearance when necessary for later cars.